All things #birthrites and (M)otherhood

I’ve never been one for keeping quiet about my love for midwives and midwifery. Any hint of discussion in the popular media and I find it difficult to ignore (just like now, when I should be drafting my next job application). This morning for instance, I was unable to leave my parked car and get back to the office because BBC Radio 4 consumer programme You and Yours were having a call-in about the UK Health Secretary’s announcement that 3000 more midwives are going to be pulled out of a hat to meet the massive shortfall in the NHS. This need was also pitched alongside the depressing statement that the UK has one of the highest infant mortality rates in Western Europe.

I spent some time in my car shouting at the radio, tweeting furiously about the Health Secretary’s role in eradicating independent midwifery, stripping students of NHS bursary’s and generally screwing up anything maternal health related during his time in the role, the fact that a rise is infant mortality is also down to the exclusion of vulnerable groups from healthcare due to impossible charges for non-UK/paperless residents etc etc etc My number 2 son who was in the car with me begged to be let out before I continued further.

The UK is often touted as an example of publicly funded midwifery-led care that should be learnt from and emulated where possible around the world. Thanks to Mr Hunt this is a rapidly declining recommendation, yet it still pops up in discussions where midwives are even less valued by the state than they are here.

This report popped up on my twitter feed today. Quoting the excellent work of Canadian midwifery professor Saraswathi Vedam, the report argues for the greater role of midwifery-led birth care in the US. With the usual idealistic view of midwives in Europe, Canada and Zealand – without saying so a particular kind of midwifery from the white folks as this model of institutionalised and regulated health care is. When I read this commentary, alongside listening to the discussion on my radio, I also inevitability think of my own research in Mexico. The long, long long debates and conversations I have with my research partner and friend Cris Alonso about trying to get midwifery even recognised a profession in Mexico, let alone through the doors of a public institution or university. I’ve come to realise how much we (as researchers, policy makers, families, educators) demand from midwives. Whether they be traditional birth attendants in low-middle income setting, or independently practising below the radar in a country that prohibits home birth, or over-regulated, overworked and underpaid in a rich country’s public health system – we want a lot.

Yet at the same time as demanding more (or less) midwives, stretching out their responsibilities and scope, bringing them under ever closer scrutiny, what I ask are we doing for them?

The midwifery models of care across cultures and histories promote an ethics of care, one that centres women as experts in themselves, values intergenerational knowledge and above all a concern for the environment in which women grow and bear children. When will governments, policy makers and users of health services apply the same philosophy to the women who take up the profession and vocation of midwifery? We cannot expect these people to work miracles unless we provide them with the respect, resources, tools, autonomy, educational opportunities and environment to do so. As the hashtag implies #MidwiferyMatters , but certainly no more or less that the midwives who practice it.

Written by Jenna Murray de López, Programme Director of HCRI’s MA in Humanitarianism and Conflict Response.

Measuring the quality of maternal health outcomes is not isolated to the moment of birth. As Dr. Princess Nothemba Simelela (WHO Assistant Director-General for Family, Women, Children and Adolescents) recently stated: A good birth goes beyond have a healthy baby. A new WHO guideline released in February 2018 demonstrates that global health governance is finally coming to terms with the idea that quality and equity in maternal health is more than just a mortality numbers game. Something that midwives and medical anthropologists have been arguing for decades.

An emerging challenge to our understanding of why women die as a consequence of childbearing is a phenomenon referred to as part of the obstetric transition – moving from the natural history of pregnancy and childbirth towards institutionalization of maternity care, increasing rates of obstetric intervention and eventual over-medicalization. Whilst increasing access to hospitals in low to middle income countries (LMICs) is improving maternal mortality in the core stages of labour, the growth in obstetric intervention is paradoxically causing an increase in late maternal mortality (deaths that occur more than 42 days but less than one year after the termination of pregnancy). In short, it is now recognised that the obstetric transition does not equate to better quality in care and improvements in mortality. This recognition is to be celebrated; however, in the rush for evidence-based medicine fans to pat themselves on the back, we are in danger of losing sight of non-mortality implications of obstetric transition, that impact on women’s health throughout the life-course.

Abuse and Mistreatment in Childbearing

In 2014 the WHO declared the mistreatment of women during childbirth and associated human rights violations a ‘global problem’. The issue was further highlighted in 2015, as UN and regional human rights experts issued a joint statement explicitly calling on states to address ‘acts of obstetric and institutional violence’. Despite this, international and regional standards on abuse and mistreatment of women during birth remain in the early stages of development. Moreover, the testimonies of women who are subject to violence remain on the periphery of knowledge and drivers of change.

Naming Obstetric Violence

Ideas, arguments and debates about mistreatment and abuse during childbirth have been most developed in Latin America, where the term Obstetric Violence grew out of activist movements in Venezuela, Argentina and, more recently, Mexico. Though the terminology has been contested by global health institutions, obstetric violence is a term well suited to the Latin American context. Recognised as a form of gender-based violence (GBV), it has been incorporated into national legislation aimed at women’s rights to live a life free from violence. As a collection of acts and consequences obstetric violence is now clearly defined, yet it remains little understood in terms of the direct impact on women, and the inherent muddiness between emergency medical treatment and systemic misuse of intervention. At least by naming the abuse as violence, broader links can be made to societal influence outside of the institution.

My own research in Mexico argues that it is a form of GBV precisely because it is done to women because of who they are (biological reproducers) and what they represent (moral subjects). Obstetric violence violates women’s reproductive health rights, and results in physical or psychological harm during pregnancy, birth and postpartum. The measurable signs of a violent and dysfunctional system in Mexico include a 50% caesarean section rate in the public sector, with estimates of up to 85% in the private hospitals; and episiotomy as routine practice. Perpetrators of obstetric violence can be lead clinicians, though they can also be nurses, student doctors and other support staff – regardless of gender. Obstetric violence earned its name because it happens within the space of obstetric logic, it happens as a direct consequence of the obstetric transition.

Obstetric violence is both direct and structural and this means it is complicated. Large public facilities in LMICs (and beyond) are understaffed and understocked, providing a stressful environment where professionals are unable to ensure levels of care that are kind and respectful. Unlike other forms of violence, treating perpetrators of obstetric violence as criminals detracts from the problem that is inherently structural. Imposing criminal sanctions on health personnel who commit acts owing to serious weaknesses in the health system leaves the causes at the heart of the phenomenon unresolved, resulting in inefficient measures to resolve incidents of violence. All the whilst the pressure to improve maternal mortality rates and meet global development goals mean that women in LMICs are left with little choice but to be treated in an environment that will no doubt scar them in some way for life.

The right to live or die, receive respectful medical care and have autonomy throughout pregnancy, birth and puerperium are heavily loaded concepts when so much is at stake politically and professionally. The stitches from unnecessary interventions may only take weeks to heal but as is evident in the wealth of testimonies coming out of Mexico the trauma of abuse will last throughout the life-course.

‘In many ways I have found maternity leave to offer some of the valuable aspects of a sabbatical.’

The following post is my response to a recent article on the @GnHigherED Academics Anonymous column. Before I go any further, I must stress this is not a sideways attack at the person who wrote the column. I am not in the business of public (or private) attacks against my fellow academic primary carers. The author clearly had a very positive experience both in terms of early motherhood and the time afforded by her employer to go through this transition. And that’s great.

My issue with this post, and clearly one of numerous respondents on my twitter feed, is the underlying message that mat leave offers a period to catch up on the research activity that so evades us when we are working. The author refers to the luxury of having the choice, not the pressure to work. I’m not happy with what this implies.

I do not speak from a position of bitterness, I speak from a position of experience. Those who know me personally, or have read my PhD blogs about motherhood during fieldwork and writing up, will have heard me joke about my PhD Babies. In the past I have referred to my two bouts of academic maternity leave as my strategy for completion. It always made me chuckle, but this article has given me pause to reflect.

I worked through my maternity leaves out of necessity. I could not afford to complete a PhD in Anthropology, with a years’ fieldwork and a year’s writing up. I too was fortunate to be in full-time employment whilst I studied with generous provision to leave when I became pregnant on two occasions. My PhD babies are now in school, their early months a distant memory – they appear to have suffered for nothing. I however realise that for 3 of my 4 children I spent their first years barely surviving and on many occasions ambivalent about their presence because I had a deadline to meet. It took me just as long to get to an age where I had the confidence for HE as it did for me to decide I wanted a family. I did make a choice, but choices come from limitations not freedom.

I strove through the 6yrs of my PhD and motherhood, because my first mentor in HE informed me she had decided to forego having children because she didn’t believe in academia you could be successful at both. I wanted to prove her wrong.

This anonymously written article has touched many nerves on social media, and in doing so has served to highlight just how many women do not have a positive experience, and return to work seriously disadvantaged and behind their male or child-free colleagues. Working on maternity leave for a large amount of the population is born of fear and necessity that their careeer opportunities will be stunted by the demands of caregiving. There are clear problems with how one becomes a ‘successful’ academic (via over-production and free labour) and the support available to make a family in a healthy and economically viable way.

This is a *deeply* harmful article, perpetuating a commonly-held idea that mat leave is time “off”, when for most women it is a time of huge emotional and physical re-adjustment / healing / exhaustion, that certainly does not leave “space to read widely” FFS.

Quality over quantity: The true cost of improving maternal mortality in Mexico

Recent reflections on the successes and failures of Millennium Development Goal 5 (MDG5) have led researchers, policymakers and practitioners to recognise that the excessive medicalisation of pregnancy and birth, and emphasis on increased access to emergency facilities do little to guarantee equity and quality of care. Moreover, increases in integrated prenatal care programmes and facility delivery have failed to have any significant impact on maternal mortality ratios (MMR) in low to middle income countries (LMICs).[2] With an increase in facility based services, incidents of disrespect and abuse in childbirth have been documented across the globe[3]. Large public facilities that are understaffed and understocked provide a stressful environment where maternal health care practitioners are unable to ensure evidence based clinical care that is kind and respectful. Threat of mistreatment and abuse has led many women to avoid accessing facilities all together, and seek alternative and more respectful forms of care.[4]

Qualitative evidence demonstrates women’s preferences for continuity of care and trusting relationships, as well as local traditions and beliefs surrounding the social significance of childbirth often outweigh free access to technocratic, facility-based services.[5] The “Midwives Voices Midwives Realities” report established that midwives working in facilities are disrespected, harassed, bullied , underpaid, unsafe and overworked[6]. It has been well established that quality care includes kindness and compassion towards women, as well as self care of midwives[7]. This cycle of abusive care is global and must be addressed to achieve excellence, evidence and rights in MNH.

World Health Organization, United Nations Population Fund and the International Confederation of Midwives all state that midwives are the ideal provider for maternal and newborn health worldwide. The Lancet “Midwifery” series details how “midwifery is a vital solution to the challenges of providing high-quality maternal and newborn care for all women and newborn infants in all countries”[8]. Research into disrespect and abuse has begun to reveal however that midwives by themselves are not enough, they require professional autonomy and integration as competent professionals. Even though facilities may hire midwives, these are not “optimised for low-risk women, and staff monitor and intervene more than is necessary for the overwhelming majority of women”[9]. As a consequence, the term “Too little, too late and too much too soon” has come to describe low and middle income countries maternal health[10]. The push to prevent maternal mortality has driven women to large birthing facilities, and has contributed directly to a significant increase in cesarean rates, presenting added risks for women and babies and increased mortality for women[11]

Though midwives and midwifery exist, in some form or another, in all countries across the globe, there is a distinct lack of (quantitative or qualitative) data in LMICs that have no, or little professional recognition of midwives or adequate recording systems for out-of-hospital birth outcomes. Over recent decades LMICs have experienced rapid population growth and intense urbanization. It is estimated that more that 45% of LMIC populations now live in towns or cities. Yet, it is precisely out-of-hospital birth practices in towns and cities that remain the least understood and understudied. This deficiency of data, which would be able to offer a broader understanding of the ways and means in which women give birth in an urban context, is an issue for policy and implementation of strategies that aim to improve quality, choice and sustainability of infant-maternal health for large urban populations.

In this paper we report on a case example of two midwife led birth centres in Mexico, from which data has been recorded using the MANASTATS system for 10 years[12]. We present an overview and preliminary analysis of essential outcomes between 2007 to 2017, recorded in the Midwives Alliance of North America Statistics Project dataset (MANA stats version 2.0 and 3.0). The MANA stats dataset includes nearly 200 variables including: demographics of women and families; pregnancy history and general health; antepartum, intrapartum, neonatal, and postpartum events and procedures; and maternal and newborn outcomes. The variables referred to in this paper include type of birth (vaginal or caesarean section; level and type of intervention; transfer rate and mortality outcomes. We argue that this alternative accounting, using a limited sample size (N=559) is still capable of indicating quality of care, and as such has significance for global accountability and quality agendas. Whilst the birth centre data set is not comparable to facility based data sets, we ask what this level of data can tell us about birth outcomes in alternative birth spaces, what assumptions can be made about low-intervention data? And furthermore, when complemented with qualitative data, what kind of community based health indicators arise which are grounded in local ideas about what constitutes quality and respectful maternity care?

In a global health context we argue that that despite important reductions in maternal mortality and morbidity, more progress is needed to ensure all women have access to quality care that is culturally respectful. Mexico’s national maternal mortality fairs no worse than the richer states of its northern neighbour, however its cesarean section is much higher than any developed country. Wide spread health reform over 25yrs has gradually increased accessibility to healthcare and more women than ever are receiving prenatal care and birth attention at little to no personal financial cost. We propose that Mexico provides a fruitful case example because of recent national efforts to professionalize midwifery in response to high maternal mortality for income level (38 per 100,000 births[13]) and cesarean rates (49%[14]) There is potential for comparison with other Latin American, Eastern European and South Asian LMICs characterized by women having high induction and cesarean rates coupled with high rates of disrespect and abuse. Drawing from 18 months ethnographic fieldwork (Murray de López) and 13 years of clinical experience in south and central Mexico in midwifery and public health (Alonso), we ask how our data helps us think through the following questions: Is the equity and quality agenda central to the SDG approach really any different from the MDG approach? What can women’s avoidance strategies during pregnancy, birth and postnatal tell us about poor quality care? Is maternal mortality enough of an indicator to know that women are safe? And in relation to this, is it possible to improve quality and reduce mortality and morbidity at the same time.

In these contexts, women begin to seek alternative birthing practices and providers to avoid intervention, unnecessary cesarean and abuse.

Alternative Accounting

The quantifiable evidence base approach in global health is driven by an emphasis on Random Control Trials (RCTs) as statistically viable ways of creating health indicators. Calculated as rates, ratios and percentages, health indicators quantify the qualitative experience of human life. This approach requires large amounts of data to be statistically robust. In the case of maternal health, mortality and fertility rates become the evidence base for the health and wealth of a nation and the basis for intervention. This emphasis on the collection of ‘good numbers’, raises questions about what kind of data and what sorts of outcomes should be considered as valuable.[15] Much work carried out by small-scale organisations and independent health-workers remains ‘uncountable’ within this system and therefore remains unaccounted for. In the field of critical global health, arguments have arisen for alternative forms of accounting, which consider local interventions and cross-culturally defined health indicators.[16] Thinking critically about numbers is an attempt to rethink what is meant by evidence, rather than shift the ways in which it is gathered. Alternative accounting asks how we might account for the impact of small scale or periphery services. It argues that accountability should not focus upon what can be counted, but on how service providers can be held accountable for quality and equity. It also argues that accountability be based on local values, which in this case would be women´s perceptions of safety, quality and equity in maternal health. It is an approach that does not reject statistics, but asks that they are recognised as ‘partial, created, fallible stories’ that need to be accompanied by other forms of less measurable evidence, in order for interventions to be not only targeted, but meaningful and sustainable.

Safer Motherhood

The concepts of safe and safer motherhood have been universally defined however, what constitutes ‘unsafe motherhood’ is less clear. Whilst notions of what is ‘unsafe’ about pregnancy and birth go undefined, there remains a space for misinterpretation and manipulation at both local and global levels. A dangerous and unhelpful dichotomy appears where facility based intervention equates to ‘safe motherhood’ and anything other than facility based care (and the people who provide it) equates to ‘unsafe’ with no measurable evidence base. In LMICs where emphasis is placed upon providing increased access to institutions, in order to adhere to safer motherhood principles, less is known about the alternative spaces that women seek for pregnancy, birth and postnatal care.

Midwifery led birth centers (MLBC) are often not considered or counted as “facilities” or “obstetric units”. MLBCs are expanding globally as a mid point model between seemingly “unsafe” home birth and “overly medicalized” facility births. Birth centers in the US and Canada and midwifery led units in the UK and Netherlands consistently demonstrate outcomes comparable to homebirth rates in HIC which include low intervention rates including cesarean and high satisfaction[17]. Research on outcomes of MLBCs is lacking in countries where midwives and MLBCs are not integrated into the health system. The Goodbirth Network has identified over 480 birth centers across the globe, and operating in countries where there is no regulation for this practice. Mexico is one example, where birth centers exist and are run by midwives but national regulation focuses solely on hospitals and is undefined around homebirth. In these cases, births at MLBCs are considered homebirths and will be documented as “unqualified care” outside of an healthcare facility. This begs two questions: what difference does lack of regulation incur in outcomes of women seeking out of hospital care with midwives in unregulated countries, if any? And secondly if women are receiving improved care in MLBCs, as the model would infer, documenting these births as “outside of a health care facility” and “attended by an unqualified provider” would need to be revisited.

Out of hospital birth in urban Mexico

Midwifery in Mexico is currently not understood to be a profession, nor is there acceptance of the midwifery model of care as a desirable norm for most women. Over 88% of births are attended in health care facilities and 87% by a physician (INEGI, 2016). There are multiple obstacles that preclude midwifery care as an option within maternal health in Mexico. While there has been a commitment to integrated medicine in the public sector, such as the Intercultural Hospital in San Cristobal de Las Casas, and recently “Humanized Birth” areas in maternity hospitals in Tula, Hidalgo and Tlaxcala, there are different and conflicting opinions and visions how to achieve “integrated medicine,” which includes midwifery care. Access to midwifery education is limited and job placement post graduation is scarce.

A strong and growing movement from within and outside of the government in support of the professionalization of midwifery and its integration into the health sector recognizes the need to create trained and qualified midwives and provide health care that is centered on women´s values and choices, particularly given the cultural diversity that constitutes Mexico. The Ministry of Health recognizes the need to integrate multicultural solutions to a multicultural nation. In 2009, the Ministry of Health, through its Center for Gender Equity and Reproductive Health program, published the “Holistic Strategy to Accelerate the Reduction of Maternal Mortality in Mexico.” (SSA, 2014). The strategy recommended the hiring of non-medical providers, such as professionally trained midwives, obstetric nurses and perinatal nurses for prenatal and birth care. In order to achieve this, the hiring code that recognizes Obstetric Nurses (Enfermeras obstetricas) was reinstated in 2008 and in 2011, and a hiring code was also adopted that recognizes professional midwives. In 2016, the Norm 007 that regulates the care of women during pregnancy, birth and postpartum was reviewed recognizing obstetric nurses and professional midwives as qualified providers and their need to provide training to traditional midwives.

In Mexico there are approximately 10 birth centers that offer services under the midwifery model operating with no regulatory framework and outside of the health system. On the one hand midwives refer to be afraid of the health system because of fines, closures and legal reprisals and on the other hand, the health system expresses confusion about how to regulate these spaces without a regulatory framework. There are no specializations aimed at midwives which may provide them with tools for the direction and management of birth centers, or a view on operating a business model, human resources management, leadership, administrative, accounting and finance skills, and legal orientation. Nor is there an expert body that can advise and support birth centers according to a successful business model and negotiate with the health system based on a regulatory framework.

Despite the effort of gratuity and trainings on “nice treatment culture (cultura del buen trato)” promoted at healthcare facilities, more and more women seek for midwives for their sexual and reproductive care, as they try to avoid the obstetric violence experienced or perceived both in public and private institutions. Birth centers offer a physical space to ensure the implementation of the midwifery model.

Research conducted by Sanchez in 2016 exposed that although midwives have sought regulation and integration of birth centers, health authorities have repeatedly denied the value of homelike environments and midwifery autonomy as safe for women[18].

Luna Maya Birth Centers provide a model of community-informed maternal and family health care in two locations in Mexico: Mexico City and the southern town of San Cristobal de Las Casas near the Guatemalan Border. The flexibility of the model allows for the integration of international best practices and guidelines into the existing culture of care that has been informed and determined by women in the community it serves. The growth and success of Luna Maya’s model of care is largely due to this human-centered approach to practice implementation. Luna Maya seeks to expand the models associated with community-based midwifery care, and through this expansion has found an innovative way to meet the needs of two distinct groups of women and families in both San Cristóbal de Las Casas in Chiapas and in Mexico City.

What MANA stats data tells us

Data was contributed by 4 different midwives, including CPMs, unlicensed direct-entry midwives, apprentices. All out-of-hospital births (home, birth centre or other[19]) were attended by a lead CPM or unlicensed direct-entry midwife, aside from intrapartum transfers (see fig1.).

The total dataset consists of 618 archived forms of which 500 birth outcomes are recorded (502 newborns in total) and comprise the final sample (N=500). Briefly, 87% of women in the sample self-identified as mestiza Mexican and/or Hispanic, of that number 8% as indigenous, and the remaining 23% as other nationalities/ethnicities. It is important to note that the MANAStats data form does not include a variable that indicates indigenous Mexican. Most women paid for midwifery care out-of-pocket, with a small percentage receiving subsidised or free care dependent on economic status or vulnerability. Employment or State insurance in Mexico will not cover out-of-hospital birth. Between the sample period of 2007-2017 there were no maternal deaths and a total of 5 neonatal deaths were recorded which include previously known anomalies and anomalies detected at birth (within 6 weeks postpartum, see fig.3).

Antenatal Risk Status

High risk women were risked out of out of hospital birth care but were welcome to receive pre and postpartum midwifery care. Risk referral includes chronic diseases such as diabetes and cardiac problems. Pregnancy complications such as preeclampsia and gestational diabetes were referred. Previous cesareans were not risked out nor were twins and breeches, although full informed consent was given and women themselves chose referral or care by midwives. It is important to note that in some occasions, women opt to birth out of hospital despite being high risk due to fear of obstetric violence or non-consensual care. Age, parity, education and socio-economic status were considered for care provision but not risked out.

The reason risk criteria remains so flexible is because often women seek care from Luna Maya because they have been automatically scheduled for a cesarean in the public or private sector. Currently in Mexico women under 18 and over 35 and previous cesareans are automatically labelled as high risk and scheduled for cesarean despite ample evidence to the contrary. Some women who were risked out refused to transfer care- as in the case of several breeches, one after a previous cesarean, three severely malformed fetus´ and one diabetic and stated they would birth on their own before attending a government facility. The outcomes in some of these births were not good, including neonatal deaths, and highlight the added risk of systemic obstetric violence among high risk women which may push them to pursue suboptimal clinical care, choosing kindness and respect over technology. In all of these cases Luna Maya provided care as ethical review by midwives concluded that women deserve care always. Although more research is necessary to describe these specific outcomes, it is important that women who are at high risk for complications are occasionally opting out of obstetric care due to perception of disrespect and abuse.

Mode of Birth

Fig.1 Place of Birth Fig.2 Mode of Birth

(Note: Other is women´s shelters that include a womens’ safe house and a shelter for single indigenous women)

Of the sample of 500 women, 85.6% completed an out-of-hospital birth (n=500). The spontaneous vaginal birth rate for the sample was 90.2% including vaginal births in the hospital. Of the 428 out-of-hospital births, 49 women had a vaginal birth after one or two or three previous caesarean sections (VBAC, VBAC2, VBAC3). The VBAC success rate for women over the complete sample was 85,2%. A total of 6 out-of-hospital births were breech presentation.

Transfers and Complications During Labour

The total intrapartum transfer rate, over the ten-year period, was 14% (N=72) of all planned out-of-hospital births. Of the 72 intrapartum transfers, 13 were urgent transfers, 49 of which resulted in caesarean section, giving an overall caesarean section rate of 9.8%. There were 5 postpartum transfers from the whole sample (3 urgent) and 7 neonatal transports (5 urgent). It is important to note that all women are out of the midwives’ care as soon as transfer takes place, though women will often return to the birth centre for postpartum care and only an insignificant amount become lost to follow-up. It is also important to note that in Chiapas the great majority of intrapartum transports result in cesarean section due to the lack of a sympathetic and supporting obstetrician, whereas the majority of transports in Mexico City resolve in vaginal birth due to a highly supportive obstetrician who includes the midwives in the continuity of care at the hospital.

Fig. 3 Out-of-hospital labour and birth complication characteristics

Shoulder dystocia n(%)

14 (2.8)

Thick or particulate meconium n(%)

13 (2.6)

Blood loss over 500 ml n(%)

89 (17.8)

Blood loss over 1000 ml n(%)

14 (2.8)

Pre-eclampsia.eclamsia during pregnancy/labour n(%)

5 (1)

Intrapartum transfer n(%)

72 (14.4)

Postpartum transfer n(%)

5 (1)

Neonatal transfer

7 (1.4)

Maternal deaths

0

Infant death before 6 weeks Postpartum

5

Conclusion

Reflections on the successes and failures of Millennium Development Goal 5 have led researchers, policymakers and practitioners to recognise that the excessive medicalisation of pregnancy and birth, and emphasis on increased access to emergency facilities do little to guarantee equity and quality of care. Moreover, increases in integrated prenatal programmes and hospital facility delivery have failed to have any significant impact on MMR in LMICs. By contrast, with an increase in access to hospital maternity care, incidents of disrespect and abuse have arisen as part of a global phenomenon. Large public facilities that are understaffed and understocked provide a stressful environment where maternal health care practitioners are unable to ensure evidence based quality care. In LMICs like Mexico where policy is only just beginning to recognise the possibility of technical midwives as a vital part of public health services, there is little to suggest their presence would impact on improving quality and equity. In fact, by entering an existing environment of disrespect, midwives may eventually be accused of contributing to worsening the experience and outcomes for women. Therefore, damaging the possibility of their growth as a specialist profession.

Despite this problem, the better promotion of midwifery-led care remains vital for the improvement of maternal health as a global concern. In order for this to happen there needs to be a more detailed picture of the different practices and environments within which midwives practice with autonomy. As part of this, alternative forms of accounting should be sought that consider locally based interventions and culturally defined health indicators. Accountability should not focus solely on what can be counted, but on how service providers can be held accountable for quality and equity. As a way of working towards this, this paper has presented preliminary data of outcomes from two established MLBCs to show what can happen under an alternative system of low-risk management of maternal health. The data described here presents the need for a more in-depth and broader understanding of midwifery-led care and out-of-hospital birth in the urban context of LMICs. In conclusion, we advocate for wider implementation of the MANAStats data system, adjusted to be culturally appropriate, amongst midwives attached to MLBCs in towns and cities of Mexico. Furthermore, that this form of data collection be complemented with qualitative research and be considered seriously in the future development of respectful and equitable maternal health care.

[3] Bowser D and Hill K. 2010. Exploring evidence for disrespect and abuse in facility based childbirth report of a landscape analysis, USAID-TRAction Project, Harvard School of Public Health, University Research Co., LLC.

Maternal health is a key indicator of a country’s progress in improving both health equity and social inequality. At least this is what I read on an almost daily basis, it becomes an opening statement to my grant bids and a mantra I repeat often in the classroom. I do on many levels believe this is true. I have previously, in broader terms argued that the way in which a society treats women, is an overall indicator of oppression and inequality in said society. So it follows suit, maternal health may be one way in which this is reflected. Yet, beyond the grand statement, how do we prove this is so? What kinds of evidence counts, and who gets to say so?

I’m juggling a few (sparsely funded) projects at the moment. Making sure that whatever the outcome of my next contract timeline, I have a CV that reflects I’ve achieved something and that daily academic duties have not torn me too far apart from my research topic of choice. Contract precarity is not something I mean to discuss in this post or this blog at all. But I will make this optimistic point – it is forcing me to focus, tame my possibility tentacles and make sure I have an overall project that not only relates to my current post, but can move with me if I need to. Realistically, that does play a part in deciding which aspects of gender, relationships and health I throw my energies at.

I’ve got the core debates down, I know that MMR is a key yet slippy issue, I’m glad that global health has finally listened to social science and recognised that quantity does not equate to quality in health care provision. I am energised by the standard of amazing work coming out of medical anthropology in terms of challenging metrics, RCTs and the politics of universality. Moreover, I have gained enough in confidence to recognise that I must work with and not against my colleagues in medicine if change is ever likely to occur. My interactions within the institutional realms of health have become as much a source of field data as when I am wandering clueless and happy through the neighbourhoods of urban Chiapas. I am finally hitting on a way to enmesh the rhetoric with the everyday. I have spent enough time in my own fieldnotes to constantly ask of policy – “But what would this mean to …..?” “What would she/they have to say about this claim …?” or “Does this matter to …., what would they say was important”. In other words, my interlocutors have become my method through which I analyse and evaluate the claims of global health.

As the brilliant anthropologist Vincanne Adams and her collaborators argue, new is not always better and time must be taken to evaluate success in a localised sense, before the next big idea springs into action. The ‘slow research’ method (i.e. ethnography) proposed by Adam’s and her colleagues offers a direct challenge to the market demand for innovation in global health research. In this respect I am taking a moment to pause, go back to the beginning of my overlapping projects, and also the drivers behind them. In doing so I will repeat some old questions, to see if I am offered insight and a different perspective. Using my most established field contacts and the written down conversations I have had with them over the years, I begin from today to ask what maternal health is in an ethnographic sense, and moreover what matters to those living through it? My challenge is to define Everyday Maternal Health, at least in a Mexican context and over time find some clarity over local variance and priority – one that can confidently contribute to macro ideas about what women actually, and really need to address the power imbalances in their lives.

As world breast feeding week begins my twitter timeline is overflowing with the celebration of the milky boob, it’s place in the world as saviour of all, how all mothers should be supported to feed when and where they wish, how breastfeeding is and should be the norm, it’s natural, it’s amazing, it’s simply the best etc etc you get the idea!

Whilst yes on some level, all of those things are true, back down in the real world life is complex, economies cause suffering, gender inequality and structural violence are certainly not a thing of yesteryear, and breastfeeding discourse becomes another way of imposing things onto women’s bodies.

Some argue that reduction in exclusive feeding from birth is a phenomenon of industrialisation and capitalism. Whilst others argue that the practice of exclusive breastfeeding has never really existing both historically and culturally across the globe – the two factors which are often thrown around in feeding or milk reduction debates. Anthropologists have confidently shown how the idealised model of exclusive feeding for six months from birth is based on practices of women living in the global south, who have no other choice due to food scarcity. On the other hand, anthropologists have also shown how the politics of feeding has always involved manipulation by formula milk companies, who are at the root of the depletion and quality arguments surrounding breast milk and nutrition. You see, I said it was complicated. And I haven’t even touched upon the objectification of women’s bodies, sexual trauma, male lactation and milk sharing!

What I observe ultimately, in my research and teaching, is that breasts, human milk and the maternal body as provider of a unique substance that science cannot beat continues to be more, rather than less, of a contentious subject. It seems that the more we (claim) to know, the more emotive and creative the arguments. Making global health initiatives, like World Breastfeeding Week subject to a barrage of standpoint arguments and shouting matches – that ultimately distract from its aim, which is to better the conditions for women who wish (via cultural necessity or desire) to use their bodies to feed and nurture their offspring. And I suppose that’s my point here, any concern for breastfeeding should start with the woman who makes the milk in the first place. It is a social issue but it begins with an individual, and it is she who knows what is best – which may or may not be for her, her breast.

I’m currently working on a paper about mother’s milk as a source of contamination and how it is dealt with in the cross-over between local and medical ideas about risk. Although comparative anthropological work on breastfeeding has (thankfully) blossomed and advanced since the turn of the century, I wanted to take a few moments to summarise why Vanessa Maher’s 1992 edited volume The Anthropology of Breast-feeding: Natural Law or Social Construct remains my go-to text for thinking critically about global health and child rearing practices. If you wish to move beyond the recent evangelism on breastfeeding as the panacea to all inequality and question whether policy has changed tack at all, this volume is a good place to start (and a great warm-up read to the 2015 volume of Ethnographies of Breastfeeding).

First published in 1992 this edited collection remains as relevant, if not even more so today. The critiques developed in this volume, predominantly a) little is known about the cultural practices of BF in the western world; b) that universalised global health policy is often framed within the idealism of BF in the developing world – which is generally born out of economic and social restraints and bears no resemblance to the expected lives of women in industrialised and post-industrialised countries; c) the cultural and social dimension of our understanding of BF casts doubt on the accepted medical wisdom of many international organisations active in the field of healthcare.

The latter is what concerns me most in my current writing and thinking today. The most recent research and inclusion in the sustainability agenda surrounding improvements in BF is highly situated within a medical discourse. In an effort to highlight the disconnect between the value of human milk as a substance and its substitution, a paper in the recent Lancet series on BF argued: The fact that the reproductive cycle includes breastfeeding and pregnancy has been largely neglected by medical practice, leading to the assumption that breastmilk can be replaced with artificial products without detrimental consequences (Victora et al 2016:485). Whilst this may be the case, the current push to situate breastfeeding within a discourse of nutrition, maternal and infant morbidity and mortality, and human intelligence is no more helpful. Anthropology has done much work over the years on the impact of pathologizing pregnancy and childbirth – there is much we can learn from this in how we understand breastfeeding once it is captured under the medical gaze.

In the introductory chapter to the collection Maher positions a critical anthropological analysis of breastfeeding via the interrogations. These categories provide a framework for a cross-cultural examination of breastfeeding practices without falling into the trap of universalising meaning:

Breast Vs Bottle – an oversimplification

An infants’ survival will depend on many factors but certainly not only on having been breastfed – economic status, education of the mother, housing, access to medical care, social controls on women’s sexualities and reproductive capacities, caregiving practices. Ethnographic research in urban areas of the Philippines and Tanzania for example, has shown that the mode of feeding in the populations’ most healthy infants appears to be insignificant (:4).

‘Nutritional uses’ of breastfeeding are culturally determined and this must be taken into account.

Whose milk is it anyway?

In many societies, the rules regarding breastfeeding are laid down by men and tend to support male-dominated institutions.

That younger women’s practices are often enforced by older women does not necessarily mean that ideas behind such practices originated with women.

Breast milk is a female resource whose cultural and institutional importance is such that men and women content for its control. Cross-cultural accounts of the meanings behind human milk as a bonding substance and feeding as symbolic connections between humans evoke gendered ownership which transcends that of the mother-child unit.

Breastfeeding and Political Order

Associating breastfeeding with intimacy and privacy in industrialised societies has resulted in the exclusion of nurturing practices in public spaces – That a woman should breastfeed at work or in public is a violation of cultural categories which sustain a power structure.

Societal rules about gender and segregation and cultural beliefs about spoiling milk impact on space and duration of feeding. Notions of pollution are apparent in all aspects of how, why and where women can breastfeed in various cultures.

Patriarchy and the Mother-Child Relationship

How much responsibility does a society place at the breast of the mother for emotional development and why?

Patriarchal Institutions and the Interruption of Breastfeeding

Patriarchy means that the relationship between mother and child is defined or even controlled by the cultural emphasis or social institutionalisation accorded to relationships involving adult men in dominant positions (:23).